Premier League referees will back retrospective action to ban divers where the cases are clear-cut in a boost to moves aimed at cracking down on players simulating fouls.
A proposal to consider such bans is on the agenda for a meeting of English football’s stakeholders at Wembley today that involves the FA, the Premier League, the Football League and the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA).
The FA is considering adopting a similar rule to one that operates in Scotland under which players who gain a significant advantage for their team, such as a penalty or red card for an opponent, through simulation can be punished with a two-match ban.
The FA wants the support of other stakeholders in the game and it is understood that Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL), which represents top-flight referees, would offer qualified support.
Sources close to PGMOL say that it would support dealing with obvious cases of diving — such as the penalty won by Robert Snodgrass for Hull City against Crystal Palace last month — retrospectively, via a panel looking at video replays, to create a deterrent because a yellow card for simulation is so minor.
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Gordon Taylor, the PFA chairman, said that he would back retrospective bans for diving in clear-cut cases. “We are moving into a technological age so we should look at this, but I would like the panel which makes the decision to include people who have played the game professionally,” he said.
The Times revealed yesterday that FA officials would holds talks with their Scottish counterparts to discover more about the detailed workings of their rule, which has been in operation since 2011.
An FA spokesman confirmed that, saying: “We are interested in going to see the SFA to talk about how their rule is working, but it is part of that wider conversation.”
The issue came to the fore again on Sunday when Manchester United’s Ander Herrera went down clutching his face after he appeared to have been shoved in the chest by Liverpool’s Roberto Firmino, who was reacting to his shirt being pulled.
Jürgen Klopp said that he did not view diving as a big issue in football but wanted the FA to be stricter on tactical fouls such as shirt-pulling.
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The Liverpool manager said: “How many divers did we have in the last season? Maybe it is because of the number of divers or what? How many? A lot?
“I think there are a lot of things we could think about in football. We could think about rules. In my opinion the tactical fouls . . . the tactical foul of holding a midfielder — and not because of Herrera, I mean in general — a tactical foul to hold up an offensive action should for me be an immediate yellow card.
“Tactical fouls for me are not hard but they disturb the fluency of the game. For me it is always yellow but nobody sees it like this.”
